


machine hearts

by imposterhuman



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Ashes Scene in Avengers: Infinity War Part 1, BAMF Nebula (Marvel), BAMF Tony Stark, Character Study, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Nebula & Tony Stark Friendship, Nebula (Marvel) Has Issues, Nebula (Marvel) Needs a Hug, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Tony Needs a Hug, hints of it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-15
Updated: 2019-11-15
Packaged: 2021-01-31 02:22:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21438622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imposterhuman/pseuds/imposterhuman
Summary: Nebula was more machine than person.
Relationships: Gamora & Nebula (Marvel), Nebula & Tony Stark, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 4
Kudos: 156





	machine hearts

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this before endgame came out and i was digging through my google drive and realized i never posted it, so here goes! i adore nebula and she deserves all the good things
> 
> enjoy :))

Nebula was more machine than person. With every failure, her father had replaced a piece of her with metal and wires (she had failed a lot, in his eyes). Somewhere along the line, she had lost what made her a person, had resigned her brain to code and commands rather than thought. She let herself become the obedient soldier, done hoping and waiting for a savior that would never come.

Gamora, her sister/competition/enemy, wasn’t a failure. Gamora got to keep her green skin unmarred, got to keep her humanity and her happiness, content to watch Nebula suffer and not raise a finger. When they fought, she was vicious, offering Nebula no quarter. Nebula stopped holding back, after a while, but it was too late. The damage was already done.

Nebula had thought that she was done with Gamora, was done with being hurt by her sister. Then Gamora, stupidly noble Gamora, gave up the  _ Soul Stone  _ for Nebula’s life, and then her life for the Stone. 

Nothing had ever hurt Nebula more. 

Not Thanos’s “lessons”, not torture or battles or malfunctions. Gamora, her  _ sister _ , was dead. 

If anyone were to kill Gamora, it should’ve been Nebula. They were each other’s beginnings ( _ the dark underbelly of Thanos’s ship, one green hand in blue and the other on a sword, coated in red, red, red _ ) and they should’ve been each other’s ends ( _ not this, not green shattered on a black rock, no dignity or honor in her defeat _ ). But Thanos had taken that from her, had taken  _ everything  _ from her until she was a hollow metal shell, looking to be filled with revenge. She didn’t care if she died doing it; full of death was still full of something, after all.

Then Thanos won.

Nebula was stranded on Titan on the remains of a battlefield, blanketed by ash and sorrow. And at its center, one man stood broken. Nebula recognized him; Anthony Stark, Iron Man, the one the stars sang songs about in the darkest reaches of the galaxy. The man who took out a third of Thanos’s fleet during his first strike on Terra. The man who built infinity just to survive.

The man who Thanos knew by name.

Seeing him barely holding it together sparked something distinctly  _ personlike  _ in Nebula. She thought she had forgotten what it was like to feel empathy, what it was like to feel anything but rage and despair and, most often, cloying apathy.

He wasn’t Gamora, but there was something in him that reminded her of her sister’s wild strength, the way the determination to win would settle on her shoulders like a cloak before every fight, even as he laid in the ashes of his defeat. 

Nebula offered a hand to Stark, pulling him off of his knees. The cold metal was warmed by his very human skin. For a moment, she hated him for it, for his calloused hands that felt like her sister’s, but she pulled him up anyway. No good fight ever started on your knees. She would know. 

Despite the gash in his side and the tremble in his hands, Stark met her eyes steadily. There was no fear, just anguish and burning anger. There was something dangerous there, something almost feral that she knew well.

He looked like he could take on Thanos with his bare hands. He looked like he could  _ win. _

“Come, Stark,” she said briskly. In a rare show of compassion, she gave him her arm to steady himself. Nebula didn’t shift under his weight, nor the weight of his gaze. He looked like he was biting his tongue not to ask the questions she knew he had. But they didn’t have time for questions; they both knew that. “There is still work to be done if we are to win the war.”

Stark’s eyes fluttered closed, but only for a moment. There was no time to rest. “Right,” he said bitterly. He had lost someone, too; she could tell. The desire to avenge his ghost would keep him fighting, she knew, thinking of her own ghostly delicate green hands and her father’s head on a pike. Stark took a deep breath, pushing off of her arm and onto his own two feet. “Let’s go to war, then.”

Nebula bared her teeth in a facsimile of a grin. “Let’s.”

**Author's Note:**

> gotta love when your laptop just,,,, gives up! my computer officially died today so rip me i guess. theres no point to saying this i just wanna complain
> 
> comments and kudos make me happy!!
> 
> come visit me on tumblr [@imposter-human](https://imposter-human.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
